Declined Section 75 claim. No valid DCS link

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82094369#Comment_82094369

Action Fraud (now more accurately known as Report Fraud) is simply a logging service that collates data about alleged frauds and, where applicable, will refer cases to real police for actual investigation. If Action Fraud determined that no further action was appropriate, this wouldn't have been visible to your card company, but my view remains that your card company simply wasn't convinced that they were required to reimburse you, under any of the dispute processes/reasons mentioned earlier.

They'll doubtless have advised you of your right to go to FOS within six months, and if you choose to do so, it still seems to me that you need to identify a specific reason why you're claiming that they were obliged to reimburse you, framed in terms of their failure to meet obligations under legislation or applicable regulations - in particular, you'd need to come up with a compelling counter-argument to the grounds on which your complaint was closed. Are you able and willing to share the wording of the complaint closure?

fav68

Thanks, here goes.

You raised a retail dispute against (Builders Merchant's name) for a £2500 transaction made on your credit card debited on (date). This was for roofing materials and the work was carried out by (roofing company) You raised the dispute because you said they had botched the roof repair and you needed to contact another company to fix the issues.Your dispute was rejected at pre-arbitration stage on (date) as the retailer informed us that they were the supplier of materials and not the company responsible for the works carried out. As such, there was no chargeback rights and your dispute was rejected. The matter was then reviewed under Section 75 of the consumer Credit Act 1974. This claim was also rejected as there was no clear debtor/creditor/supplier link and no breach of contract between yourselves and the retailer.

MyRealNameToo

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095346#Comment_82095346

So as it says, its been presented as poor workmanship not fraud.

eskbanker

You raised a retail dispute against (Builders Merchant's name) for a £2500 transaction made on your credit card debited on (date). This was for roofing materials and the work was carried out by (roofing company) You raised the dispute because you said they had botched the roof repair and you needed to contact another company to fix the issues.Your dispute was rejected at pre-arbitration stage on (date) as the retailer informed us that they were the supplier of materials and not the company responsible for the works carried out. As such, there was no chargeback rights and your dispute was rejected.

If this is an accurate summary of how the dispute was raised then I can see why chargeback failed, as the quality of the repair work had nothing to do with the merchant.

The matter was then reviewed under Section 75 of the consumer Credit Act 1974. This claim was also rejected as there was no clear debtor/creditor/supplier link and no breach of contract between yourselves and the retailer.

You might be able to challenge this if you can locate the case referred to previously by @MyRealNameToo where FOS upheld a complaint involving payment to a fourth party where the cardholder was unaware of this.

fav68

'This was for roofing materials' That is not true. No materials were used on my roof or delivered to my property..

fav68

I did tell the credit card company that I thought it was fraud but they are choosing to ignore that.

MyRealNameToo

The FOS doesnt set precedence unfortunately, even if I had time to look for the case the bank nor the FOS itself would be bound to come to the same conclusion even if the case was identical. There is no harm in referencing it but its generally more useful for constructing the complaint in the first place as you can see what the ombudsman picked up on and try to give focus to those elements.

Even if the case can be found the total lack of any paperwork is going to make it an uphill struggle even if you can get over the DCS issue

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095382#Comment_82095382

But from the merchant's perspective, they're presumably saying that the transaction paid for with your card was to buy materials - whether or not those materials were actually used on your job isn't relevant to them. This goes back to the conversation between the roofer and the merchant that you didn't hear - it is possible that there was some sort of collusion between them, but that would be difficult to prove, and if the merchant is basically saying that they simply sold some materials to the roofer for £2500, it could be challenging to argue that point.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095389#Comment_82095389

How does this dovetail with the workmanship issue, i.e. did you raise one then the other, or were they at the same time? Was this in writing? What specifically did you assert to be fraudulent, and in what way?

fav68

My first contact with the credit card company was by phone. I explained that I thought I had been a victim of a roofing scam. I only raised the botched repair issue after they had informed me that the retailer had contested the chargeback.

eskbanker

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/82095484#Comment_82095484

There might be some mileage in complaining that the bank initiated the chargeback claim with an inappropriate reason code, given that there's only one attempt at chargeback for any transaction, but that would require visibility of exactly what you told them and exactly how they processed it. You might be able to ascertain that with a subject access request, but if you're up against the FOS escalation deadline then I suspect that you'll struggle to gather enough useful information in time.

'Being the victim of a scam' is still too vague in that it can cover a wide range of scenarios, each of which will be different as far as chargeback is concerned, so, for example, goods/services not received is different from, say, wrong transaction amount, and in each case the chargeback needs to relate to something done (or not done) by the recipient of the card payment itself, rather than another party using your card on your behalf in a way that wasn't expected, so my understanding remains that a successful chargeback would have depended on demonstrating that the merchant did something wrong.